The wary young soul who summoned enough confidence and courage to approach my friend Catherine wasn’t…lucky. He meekly stammered, “Are you with Singles World?” and was promptly treated to a slice of razor-like repartee:

“My world is small but it’s not that small.”

In fish-infested waters there be barracuda! And there be dragons too, as we shall see.

Now what to make of the moon’s stranded soul? What prospectus enticed and then failed him? What matter of man doth he symbolize? We’ll come to that directly.

After publishing the Chrysalis Tarot Companion Book in 2016, a book all Chrysalis enthusiasts should read – not because it’s great prose (it isn’t) but because it charts a thoughtful course off the confines of that godforsaken island – after that endeavor I contemplated the offing that rests on the horizon. I’m still contemplating it.

While the second half of the companion book offers greater detail than did the “Little White Booklet” that’s included with the Chrysalis deck, greater detail about each of the 78 cards’ symbolism, the first half offers a synopsis of the Chrysalis zeitgeist – its worldview spotlighted as a New Paradigm.

In that offing, far off the bow of the fancy cruise ship (a metaphor for a life of comfort), I saw three ships a-sailing – a schooner, a barque and a sloop. Each represented a mostly undressed idea that sported a few encrusted barnacles.

(An author dare not write anything until enough barnacles collect on the planks.)

The schooner’s idea points to the return of the Divine Feminine – the feminine presence of the godhead and wise counselor of human destiny. This presence is symbolized by the Chrysalis moon (above). The Divine Feminine is also known as the Great Mother, an archetype that’s been around for at least 30,000 years but likely for a great deal longer. The “return” of the Divine Feminine is a metaphor for spiritual growth par excellence and the evolution of human consciousness to a level we dare not comprehend.

The barque’s more ambitious idea points to a secular (non-religious) interpretation of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medugorje, Yugoslavia, a tiny peasant village I traveled to often and even lived in for a while. This story is bound up in Catholic doctrine and has consequently found a limited audience, i.e. Catholics.

The apparitions have been occurring in Medugorje since 1981. One of the Franciscan friars assigned to the parish told me, “Once it hits 15 years it’s lost in space.” He was right: relevance walked the plank, so to speak, around the turn of the century. The barque idea would be a fun project; for some time I’ve been keen to write something destined for condemnation by the Vatican. The Virgin Mary joining the ranks of Lilith, Diana, Isis, Kali, Asherah, Sophia, et al. would be immediately anathematized. Besides, this idea was elucidated the 50’s (without the Medugorje angle, of course) by the great German psychologist Erich Neumann: The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype.

The sloop’s idea is even more ambitious. It points to the Chrysalis worldview of a connected universe where all matter is conscious (panpsychism) and consciousness itself is the Ground of All Being: you cannot drill down on consciousness – it is the substance, quintessence and architecture of the cosmos.

The solitary man on the island in Holly’s moon painting needn’t worry because he isn’t really alone, nor is he any different from any one of us. That’s explained in part by our bowing to the worldview of scientific materialism, a worldview that insists existence beyond ourselves is religious belief, not a scientific fact. Not yet anyway! We are not alone – we are all connected to fields of infinite splendor.

My corollary to the sloop’s idea is that information and energy are equivalent and the stuff of consciousness: E = CI ~ In this formula, information sharing (I) is instantaneous, non-local and not limited to the speed of light; quantum mechanics proves that entangled particles interact with one another instantly, even when on opposite sides of the universe. Energy (E) is pervasive in the vacuum of “empty” space (quantum foam). Vacuum energy used to be known as aether, a.k.a. akasha (information).

Outside-the-box thinkers – great scientific minds such as David Bohm, Nikola Tesla, Karl Pribram, et al. and our contemporaries Shelli Joye, Sean Carroll and Nassim Haramein, et al. – are evolving this paradigm, albeit slowly. However, change will be coming to a crescendo. And soon.

Who we don’t see in the Chrysalis Moon card is the green dragon. Holly and I discussed including her but she was, uh, scuttled – too much symbolism and not enough room. So visualize her underwater. The vast ocean depths are a metaphor for the cosmically connected unconscious mind. The Green dragon herself symbolizes staggering change on a cosmic scale.

Note the difference in the waters the three ships sail. Only the sloop sails in calm waters. Until Cartesian dualism (mind vs. matter) is rendered antiquated thinking, the Green Dragon will continue to ramp up the churning seas of change.